The production of electronic grade silicon metal requires the use of a highly purified silicon-containing feed. One such feed is silane (SiH.sub.4), which is typically made from metallurgical grade silicon. There are several methods of purifying this metallurgical grade silicon metal. However, these reactions must be carefully controlled so as to preclude the formation of free HCl, which would attack the reaction vessels and contaminate the silicon with corrosion products. In addition, high pressures and temperatures are required, followed by very low temperature distillation to separate the silane from the intermediate product, trichloro silane, and the contaminating HCl. Other disadvantages include use of a relatively high cost feed (metallurgical grade silicon) and very large internal recycle requirements which increase the operating cost associated with the process. Alternative processes have been proposed which are similar, but they tend to convert some of the high cost feed into low grade silicon tetrachloride. Methods that directly convert silicon tetrachloride into silane face many of the same corrosion and purification problems.